•H23 ^ ^^ 

Copy 1 

THE 

ORIGIN or LANGUAGES, 

AND THE 

ANTIQUITY OF SPEAKING MAN. 



AN ADDRESS 

before the section of anthropology of the american 
association for the advancement of science, 

At Buffalo, August, 1886. 



By HOEATIO HALE, 

VICE-PRESIDENT. 



[From the Proceedings of the American Association for the Advancement 
C of Science, Vol. XXXV.] 



CAMBRIDGE : 

JOHN WILSON AND SON. 

Slnfbersftg ^ress. 

1886. 



\ 



THE 



ORIGIN OF LANGUAGES, 



AND THE 



ANTIQUITY OF SPEAKING MAN. 



AN ADDRESS 

BEFORE THE SECTION OF ANTHROPOLOGY OF THE AMERICAN 
ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE, 



At Buffalo, August, 1886, 



y 

By HORATIO HALE, 

VICE-PRESIDENT. 



[From the Proceedings of the American Association for the Advancement 
of Science, Vol. XXXV.] 






^€AMBRipaEy 
JOHN WlTTSTTPr AND SON. 

1886. 



-? 



-.^ 



^t^ 



ADDEESS 

BY 

HOEATIO HALE, 

VICE-PRESIDENT, SECTION H. 



THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGES, AND THE ANTIQUITY OF 
SPEAKING MAN. 



In the study of every science there arise from time to time 
difficult questions or problems, which seem to bar the way of the 
student in one direction or another. It becomes apparent that on 
the proper solution of these problems the progress of the science 
mainly depends ; and the minds of all inquirers are bent earnestly 
on the discovery of this solution. Such in biologj^ are the questions 
of the origin of hfe and the genesis of species. Anthropology, and 
its auxihary or component sciences of comparative philology, ethnol- 
ogy, and archaeology, have their share of these problems. Among 
them two of the most important are undoubtedly, in philology, the 
question of the origin of linguistic stocks, and in archaeology, the 
question of the epoch at which man acquired the faculty of speech. 
In the language of modern diplomacy, these would be styled 
''burning questions," which must be settled before any hopeful 
progress can be made in other discussions. A brief consideration 
of these questions, in the light cast upon them by the most recent 
discoveries, may therefore be deemed to form an appropriate 
introduction to the work of our Section. Briefly defined, then, our 
inquiry on this occasion will have for its subjects, or rather its 
subject, — for the two questions are closely connected, and form in 
reality but one problem, — the origin of languages and the antiquity 
of speaking man. 

The question of the origin of languages must be distinguished 
from the different and larger question of the origin of language. 



4 SECTION H. 

which belongs rather to anthropology proper than to the science 
of linguistics, and will come under consideration in the later part 
of our inquir3\ Nor yet does our question concern the rise and 
development of the different tongues belonging to one linguistic 
stock or family, like the sixty languages of the Aryan or Indo- 
European stock, the twenty languages of the Hamito-Semitic family, 
the one hundred and sixty-eight languages enumerated by Mr. 
R. N. Cust as composing the great Bantu or South African family, 
and the thirty-five languages of the wide-spread Algonkin stock. 
Such idioms, however much they ma}^ differ, are in. their nature 
only dialects. The manner in which these idioms originate is per- 
fectly well understood. When two communities, in the barbarous 
or semi-barbarous stage, whose members spoke originally the same 
language^ have been separated for a certain length of time, a differ- 
ence of dialect, due to differences of climate, culture, customs, and 
other circumstances, grows up between them. They can still un- 
derstand each other's speech, but there are variances in pronuncia- 
tion and in the use of certain words, by which they can readily be 
distinguished. In the progress of time these differences increase. 
Grammatical peculiarities are developed. Permutations of ele- 
mentary sounds, like those which are manifested in the famous 
" Grimm's law," alter whole classes of words beyond the recogni- 
tion of a hearer familiar only with the original speech. And, finall}', 
two distinct languages are found to have come into being, so diverse 
in vocabulary and grammar that each must be learned as a foreign 
speech by the speakers of the other tongue. Yet, however wide 
may be the diversity, a careful analysis and comparison will alwaj^s 
disclose the kinship, and indicate the common origin of the two 
languages. 

But while the manner in which different languages of the same 
family arise is thus evident enough, not merely in theory, but in the 
numerous instances which, have occurred within historic times, we 
have neither instance nor satisfactory theory to explain the ■ dis- 
tinction between the families themselves. When, for example, we 
have traced back the Aryan (or Indo-European) languages and the 
Semitic languages to their separate mother- tongues, which we are 
able to frame out of the scattered dialects, we find between these 
two mother-tongues a great gulf, which no explanation thus far 
proposed has sufficed to bridge over. How strongl}^ the sense of 
this difficulty has been felt by the highest minds engaged in philo- 



ADDRESS BY HORATIO HALE. 6 

logical study will be evident from two striking examples. Sixty 
years ago, Baron William von Humboldt, who held in this branch of 
study the same position which was held by his illustrious brother in 
the natural sciences, found it — as Dr.Brinton states in the excellent 
Introduction to his translation of Humboldt's " Philosophic Gram- 
mar of the American Languages " — "so contrary to the i-esults of 
his prolonged and profound study of languages to believe, for in- 
stance, that a tongue like the Sanscrit could ever be developed from 
one like the Chinese, that he frankly said that he would rather accept 
at once the doctrine of those who attribute the different idioms of 
men to an immediate revelation from God." Fifty years later, the 
distinguished representative of linguistic science in France, Pro- 
fessor Abel' Hovelacque, pronounced in his admirable compendium, 
"La Linguistique " (1875), what may be deemed the "last word" 
of science on this subject. "Not only," he affirms, "is there no 
grammatical identity between the system of the Semitic languages 
and that of the Indo-European tongues, but these two comprehend 
inflection in a manner entirely different. Their roots are totally- 
distinct ; their formative elements are essentiall}^ different ; and 
there is no relation between the two modes in which these elements 
perform their functions. The abj^ss between the two systems is 
not merely profound, — it is impassable." 

Such then is the difficulty and the gravitj^ of this question of the 
origin of languages, — a problem as serious and as fundamentally 
important for philological science as the question of the origin of 
species is deemed in biology ; and, as has been already remarked, 
on the correct solution of this problem the progress and the future, 
not merely of philology, but of the whole " Science of Man," may 
be said to depend. For not until it is finally settled will the minds 
of the students of this science be in accord on the all-important ques- 
tion whether the human race belongs to man}^ species or to onl}- one. 

Attempts to solve the problem have not been lacking. Several 
solutions have, indeed, been proposed, but no one of them has 
met with general acceptance. One of these suggested explanations 
takes into account the element of time. If man has existed for 
thousands of centuries, his speech might, it is supposed, have 
undergone in that vast period all the alterations required to produce 
these various linguistic stocks. But the conclusions of William von 
Humboldt and of Professor Hovelacque, already cited, — conclu- 
sions which express the generally received views of the best philol- 



6 SECTION H. 

ogists, — show that this explanation cannot be entertained. If the 
development of a language like the Sanscrit from a language like 
the Chinese is inconceivable, — if the abyss between the Semitic 
and the Indo-European tongues is impassable, — then it is clear 
that the mere element of time cannot help us in this difficulty. 
Moreover, we know, as a matter of fact, that the passage of time 
has not the effect supposed. It is certain that the distance between 
a Semitic tongue and an Aryan tongue in our day — as, for 
example, between the modern Arabic and the English — is no 
greater and no less than was the distance between the Semitic As- 
sj^rian and the Aryan Sanscrit a thousand j^ears before the Chris- 
tian era. If thirty centuries have made no appreciable change in 
the distinction between these two linguistic families, whj^ should we 
suppose that three thousand centuries would produce any effect in 
that direction? But in reality, as will be seen in the progress 
of our inquirj', it is most probable that no such element of long- 
protracted time can be admitted in the present case. 

Another theory which has been favored by some esteemed writers, 
and among others by Lyell in his famous work on the " Antiquit}^ 
of Man," supposes that, when men first acquired the capacity of 
speech, their use of language was probably confined to a few mono- 
syllabic roots, of vague and fluctuating import, and that, when those 
who spoke this primitive and half-formed tongue were scattered 
abroad, tlieir imperfect speech developed into the widely different 
languages which became the mother-tongues of the various linguis- 
tic families. This ingenious hypothesis, however, is liable, as will 
be seen, to all the objections which the previously described theory 
has had to encounter, and, like that, does not stand the test either 
of reasoning or of facts. If those who used this primitive speech 
were — as we must suppose them to have been — human beings like 
those who now exist, their language was a language complete in all 
its parts ; for no tribe of men has been found in an}' part of the 
world so low in the scale of humanity as not to have a complete 
and thoroughly organized language. This language maj', like the 
Chinese and the Anamese, consist wholly or mainlj^ of roots ; but 
it is none the less complete, and — what is more important to the 
argument — none the less permanent. In the vast Chinese em- 
pire, after an existence of more than four thousand years, one 
spoken language prevails, with differences of dialect not so great 
as the differences which exist between the Romanic languages of 



ADDRESS BY HOKATIO HALE. 7 

Europe. If it be suggested that this permanence may be due to 
the existence of one government and of a written character, the 
same cannot be affirmed of the many monosj'llabic languages be- 
longing to the great linguistic families of Trausgaugetic India, — 
the Tibeto-Burman family, the Tai family, and the Mon-Anam 
family, — where sometimes, as is shown by Mr. Cust in his valu- 
able work on the " Modern Languages of the East Indies," twenty 
different languages belonging to one linguistic stock are spoken by 
communities living under a dozen different governments, and in 
ever}' stage of culture. Furthermore, it may be asked, How is it 
possible to suppose that the nineteen distinct linguistic stocks 
which have been found to exist in what is now the State of Cali- 
fornia can have originated in dialects of a monosyllabic language 
spoken thousands of years ago on another continent? Where did 
these dialects lose all traces of resemblance, and how did the speak- 
ers of them come to be living side by side in this narrow area? 
This theory, it will be seen, raises difficulties far greater than 
those which it undertakes to explain. 

Finally, the latest proposed solution, and one which merits spe- 
cial attention for its scientific interest and the weight of authority 
in its favor, is the theory first propounded, I believe, by the dis- 
tinguished Viennese ethnologist. Dr. Frederick Mtiller, and adopted 
by Dr. Ernest Haeckel, by Professor Hovelacque, by General Faid- 
herbe, and other eminent authorities. This theory supposes that 
men, or rather the precursors of man, were at first incapable of 
speech, and that the}^ acquired this capacity at different places. 
This opinion is so important that it should be stated in the language 
of one of its chief advocates. In his work, " La Linguistique," 
alread}' quoted, Professor Hovelacque, after describing the im- 
passable gulf which separates the Semitic and the Indo-European 
languages, adds that the case of these languages is the case of 
a considerable number of linguistic systems ; and he proceeds : 
" The consequence of this fact is important. If, as we have shown, 
the faculty of articulate speech is the proper and the sole charac- 
teristic of man, and if the different linguistic S3'stems, which we 
know, are irreducible, they must have come into existence sepa- 
rately, in regions entirely distinct. It follows that the precursor of 
man, the first to acquire the faculty of articulate language, has 
gained this facult}- in different places at the same time, and has 
thus given birth to many human races originally distinct." 



8 SECTION H. 

Dr. Frederick Miiller, whose noble work, "The Outline of Linguis- 
tic Science " ( Grundriss der S^^rachwissenschaft), is for students of 
our time what the " Mithridates" of Adelung and Vater was to those 
of a former generation, — the great thesaurus of philologic research 
and anal}' sis, — not only maintains this view, but laj^s down specifi- 
cally the divisions of race into which the speechless descendants 
of the primitive precursor of our kind — the homo prhnigenius 
alalus — had separated before they acquired the faculty of language. 
Yet, notwithstanding the weight which may be justlj^ given to the 
opinions of such high authorities, it ma}^ be affirmed in this case, 
as in the case of the earlier theories, that the difficulties raised by 
the hypothesis are immeasurabty greater than those which it is 
designed to remove. 

The number of totally different linguistic stocks, so far as now 
known, is at the low'est computation over two hundred ; and of 
these the greater portion belong to the western continent. The 
theory now under consideration supposes that both continents were 
in earty times inhabited throughout by beings resembling men, but 
incapable of speech. It is evident that the process of this wide dis- 
persion of beings in that semi-brutal condition must have occupied 
a vast space of time. We are required to believe that suddenlj^ and 
separately, with no common impulse or cause, but at one time, all 
these scattered tribes, which had existed for countless ages without 
language, fortuitously acquired the faculty of speech, invented each 
its own language, and began to converse. Such a stupendous 
event — the simultaneous acquisition, by more than two hundred 
distinct communities of speechless beings, of the faculty which 
specially distinguishes man from the brute — would weir deserve 
to be styled miraculous. 

To come down to specific particulars, — man}^ years ago, in mak- 
ing the first ethnographical survey of Oregon, I found that there 
were in that region no less than twelve linguistic stocks, — that 
is, families of languages as distinct from one another in words 
and grammar as the Semitic family is from the Indo-European. 
The able linguists of the Bureau of Ethnology, Messrs. Gatschet 
and Dorsey, have made further investigations in this region, and 
have visited portions of it which I was unable to reach. Their re- 
searches have confirmed my classification, and have added two or 
three additional stocks. South of this district, Mr. Stephen Powers, 
in his excellent Report on California, published by the same Bureau, 



ADDRESS BY HORATIO HALE. 9 

has continued the survey in that direction, and has found sixteen 
additional linguistic stocks (besides three of the Oregon stocks) 
within the hmits of that State. Thus, in a region not much larger 
than France, we find at least thirty distinct families of languages 
existing together. We are expected to believe that thirty separate 
communities of speechless precursors of men, after living side by 
side in this inarticulate condition for an indefinite period, suddenly 
and simultaneously acquired the power of speech, and began at 
once to talk in thirty distinct languages. The mere statement of 
this grotesque proposition seems sufiicient to refute it. 

While some of the ablest reasoners have thus been groping 
vaguel3^ and blindly, in wrong directions, for the solution of this 
problem, and while others, like Humboldt and Whitney, have given 
it up in despair, the simple and sufficient explanation has been 
lying close at hand, awaiting onl^^, like many other discoveries in 
science, the observation of some facts of common occurrence to 
bring it to light. In the present case, the two observers who have 
made the conclusive facts known to us have both been Americans, 
and both of them writers of more than ordinary intelligence ; but 
both were entirel}' unknown in this branch of investigation, and 
both, moreover, had the singular ill-fortune of publishing their ob- 
servations in works of such limited circulation that their important 
contributions to science have hitherto failed to attain the notice 
they deserved. Their observations were made at about the same 
time, nearly twent}' 3'ears ago, but published at different dates, — 
the first in 1868, the second ten years later. It was the latter pub- 
lication which first attracted m}' attention, soon after its appearance, 
and led to a course of study and inquirj^ resulting in the facts and 
conclusions now to be detailed. 

Before setting forth the facts, it will be well to state at once the- 
result of the inquiry. Briefly, then, the plain conclusion to which 
all the observations point with irresistible force is, that the origin 
of linguistic stocks is to be found in what may be termed the lan- 
guage-making instinct of very young children. From numerous 
cases, of which the history has been traced, it appears that, when 
two children who are just beginning to speak are left much to- 
gether, they sometimes invent a complete language, sufficient for 
all purposes of mutual intercourse, and yet totally unintelligible to 
their parents and others about them. It is evident that, in an ordi- 
nary household, the conditions under which such a language would 



10 SECTION H. 

be formed are most likely to occur in the case of twins. One 
of the most remarkable instances is that of which a record has 
been preserved in one of the publications to which reference has been 
made. This is a volume, published in 1878, by Miss E. H. Watson, 
a lady of Boston, the authoress of several esteemed works on histor- 
ical subjects. In performing the pious duty of giving to the world 
an essay by her father, the late George Watson, on " The Structure 
of Language, and the Uniform Notation and Classification of Vow- 
els for all Languages," the editress has prefixed to it two essays 
of her own, on " The Origin of Language," and on " Spelling Ee- 
form," which show evidence of much reading and thought, and con- 
tain many valuable suggestions. The volume bears the peculiar 
title, apparently adopted by Mr. Watson, of " The Universe of 
Language," and appeared under the auspices of the now defunct 
"Authors' Publishing Company," by whose lapse most of the 
edition was cast back upon the hands of the editress, and thus 
failed to obtain the attention and credit which its value should 
have insured. 

The first of Miss Watson's essays in this volume comprises, in 
especial, one contribution to scientific knowledge, — her account of 
the ' ' children's language/' — which she justly deemed to be of great 
value, and which is perhaps even more important than she sup- 
posed. It is presented by her as bearing upon the question of the 
origin of human speech. While it has undoubtedly a real interest 
in this respect, its main value resides in the light which it casts on 
the origin of linguistic stocks. There is nothing in the example 
which clearly proves that the children in question would have 
spoken at all if they had not heard their parents and others about 
them communicating by oral sounds, — though we may, on good 
grounds (as will be shown), believe that they would have done so. 
What the case really establishes is, that children who have thus 
learned to speak ma}' invent a language of their own, different from 
all that they hear around them, and yet adequate to all the purposes 
of speech. 

In the year 1860 two children, twin boj^s, were born in a respect- 
able family residing in a suburb of Boston. The}' were in part of 
German descent, their mother's father having come from German}' 
to America at the age of seventeen ; but the German language, we 
are told, was never spoken in the household. The children were so 
closely alike that their grandmother, who often came to see them. 



ADDRESS BY HORATIO HALE. 11 

could only distinguish them by some colored string or ribbon tied 
around the arm. As often happens in such cases, an intense affec- 
tion existed between them, and the}^ were constantly' together. 
The remainder of their interesting stor}^ will be best told in the 
words of the writer, to whose enlightened zeal for science we are 
indebted for our knowledge of the facts. She thus relates it : — 

" At the usual age these twins began to talk, but, strange to sa}', 
not their ' mother-tongue.' They had a language of their own, and 
no pains could induce them to speak anything else. It was in vain 
that a little sister, five years older than thej^, tried to make them 
speak their native language, — as it would have been. They per- 
sistentlj' refused to utter a sj'llable of English. Not even the usual 
first words, ' papa,' ' mamma,' ' father,' ' mother,' it is said, did they 
ever speak; and, said the lady who gave this information to the 
writer, — who was an aunt of the children, and whose home was 
with them, — they were never known during this interval to call 
their mother b}' that name. The}' had their own name for her, but 
never the English. In fact, though thej' had the usual aflections, 
were rejoiced to see their father at his returning home each night, 
playing with him, etc., the}' would seem to have been otherwise 
completel}' taken up, absorbed with each other. . . . The children 
had not yet been to school ; for, not being able to speak their ' own 
English,' it seemed impossible to send them from home. The}^ 
thus passed the days, playing and talking together in their own 
speech, with all the livehness and volubility of common children. 
Their accent was German, — as it seemed to the famil3^ They 
had regular words, a few of which the family learned sometimes to 
distinguish ; as that, for example, for carriage, which, on hearing 
one pass in the street, they would exclaim out, and run to the 
window." 

This word for carriage, we are told in another place, was nl-si- 
boo-a^ of which, it is added, the syllables were sometimes so repeated 
that the}' made a much longer word. This, unfortunately, is the 
only word of the language which Miss Watson was able to ascer- 
tain ; but even from this one example some interesting inferences 
may be drawn. The speech was plainly not monosyllabic ; and the 
word in question is neither English nor German. In the conclud- 
ing syllables, if lengthened by repetition, we may perhaps discern 
an attempt to imitate the rumbling of a carriage. " The children," 
we are told, " went in the family by the name of the little ' Dutch 



12 SECTION H. 

boys ' ; and the father, at first inqmry of the writer, called their 
speech ' a mixture of German and Enghsh.' But the children at 
that time had never heard any German spoken ; therefore it could 
not have been the former ; and if some English words were picked 
up — as would be but probable — they seem to have been so trans- 
formed that they were not recognizable as such, unless rarely. . . . 
The mother relates that, although she could not understand their 
language, she contrived, by attention, to discover what thej^ wished 
or meant." 

If the quick ear of a mother, after years of intercourse, could 
not discern the English words, it is clear that they were not used 
in a form which would have properly entitled them to that name. 
The important information is added, that, "even in that earlj^ 
stage, the language was complete and full ; that. is, it was all that 
was needed. The children were at no loss to express themselves 
in their plays, their ' chatterings ' with each other, as our inform- 
ant expressed it, all day. Indeed, the writer would gather from 
the description given that they were more than usually animated 
between themselves." 

The sequel of the story, as graphically told by the authoress, has 
an interest, as showing that the language spoken around these 
children was to them really a foreign speech. " It finally seeming 
hopeless that the}^ were going to learn their ' own tongue,' as we 
call it, it was concluded to send them to school in the neighbor- 
hood, they being now six or seven years old. For a week, as the 
lady teacher described to whom they were sent, they were perfectly 
mute; not a sound could be heard from them, but thej^ sat with 
their e3^es intently fixed upon the children, seeming to be watching 
their every motion, — and, no doubt, listening to every sound. At 
the end of that time they were induced to utter some words, and 
gradually and naturally they began, for the first time, to learn their 
' native English.' With this accomplishment, the other began, 
also naturall}', to fade awa}', until the memory, with the use of it, 
passed from their mind." 

We cannot but share in the regret expressed by the accomplished 
authoress that she was not acquainted with these facts until it was 
too late to preserve a record of the language itself, which, it is 
evident, would have been of great scientific interest. Indeed, but 
for the facts now to be related, a suspicion might naturall3^ remain, 
in spite of all that is said of the total strangeness of the children's 



ADDRESS BY HORATIO HALE. 13 

speech, that it was, after all, only an exaggerated specimen of 
ordinary "baby-talk," — a mere babble of imperfect English, 
mixed with some mimicries of natural sounds. Most fortunately, 
another example affords the precise evidence requii'ed to dispel all 
such suspicion. Though in the case now to be described the 
circumstances were somewhat different, and the language was 
probabl}' less complete than in the instance just recorded, yet it 
happened, b}^ good fortune, that a careful and scientific observer 
was in a position to preserve at least a portion of it for our infor- 
mation. While these interesting twins were chattering their pecu- 
liar language in Boston, a little four-3'ear-old girl and her 3'ounger 
brother in Alban}^ were perplexing their parents by a similar 
vagar}'. A clear and satisfactory account of this phenomenon was 
given by the late E. R. Hun, M.D., of that city, in an article pub- 
lished in the Monthly Journal of Psjxhological Medicine (in the 
volume for 1868), under the title of "Singular Development of 
Language in a Child." For my knowledge of this most important 
evidence, as well as for man}' other valuable suggestions, I have to 
thank our distinguished associate. Dr. Brinton, whose attention no 
essential fact relating to his favorite sciences is likely to escape. 

The statements with which Dr. Hun commences his account are 
too succinct to be abridged. " The subject of this observation," 
he writes, " is a girl aged four and a half 3'ears, sprightly, intelli- 
gent, and in good health. The mother observed, when she was 
two 3'ears old, that she was backward in speaking, and only used 
the words ' papa ' and ' mamma.' After that she began to use 
words of her own invention, and though she understood readilj' 
what was said, never emploj^ed the words used b}' others. Grad- 
ually she enlarged her vocabulary until it has reached the extent 
described below. She has a brother eighteen months younger than 
herself, who has learned her language, so that the}' talk freelj" 
together. He, however, seems to have adopted it onl}' because he 
has more intercourse with her than with others ; and in some in- 
stances he will use a proper word with his mother, and his sister's 
word with her. She, however, persists in using onl}- her own 
words, though her parents, who are uneasy about her peculiarity 
of speech, make great efforts to induce her to use proper words. 
As to the possibility of her having learned these words from 
others, it is proper to state that her parents are persons of cultiva- 
fion, who use only the English language. The mother has learned 



14 SECTION H, 

French, but never uses the language in conversation. The domes- 
tics, as well as the nurses, speak English without any peculiarities, 
and the child has heard even less than usual of what is called 
bab3^-talk. Some of the words and phrases have a resemblance to 
the French ; but it is certain that no person using that language 
has frequented the house, and it is doubtful whether the child has 
on any occasion heard it spoken. There seems to be no difficulty 
about the vocal organs. She uses her language readily and freelj', 
and when she is with her brother they converse with great rapidity 
and fluency." 

Dr. Hun then gives the vocabulary, which, he states, was such 
as he had " been able at different times to compile from the child 
herself, and especiall}^ from the report of her mother." From this 
statement we may infer that the list probabl}^ did not include the 
whole number of words in this child-language. It comprises, in fact, 
only twenty-one distinct words, though many of these were used in 
a great variety of acceptations, indicated hy the order in which 
they were arranged, or by compounding them in various waj^s. As 
we know, however, on excellent authorit}^, that the conversation 
of English laborers has been found to be carried on with no more 
than a hundred words, we may believe that the talk of the children 
might be fluent enough with a much more limited vocabulary. " I 
once listened," — writes Archdeacon Farrar, in his work on " Lan- 
guage and Languages," — '' for a long time together to the conver- 
sation of three peasants who were gathering apples among the 
boughs of an orchard, and, as far as I could conjecture, the whole 
number of words they used did not exceed a hundred ; the same 
word was made to serve a variety of purposes." This, it will be 
seen, was exactly the case with the language of these children. 

Three or four of the words, as Dr. Hun remarks, bear an evident 
resemblance to the French, and others might, bj^ a slight change, 
be traced to that language. He was unable, it will be seen, to 
say positivel}' that the girl had never heard the language spoken ; 
and it seems not unlikely that, if not among the domestics, at 
least among the persons who visited them, there msiy have been 
one who amused herself, innocently enough, b}- teaching the child 
a few words of that tongue. It is, indeed, b}^ no means improba- 
ble that the peculiar linguistic instinct may thus have been first 
aroused in the mind of the girl, when just beginning to speak. 
Among the words showing this resemblance are feu (pronounced. 



ADDRESS BY HOKATIO HALE. 15 

we are expresslj^ told, like the French word), used to signify " fire, 
light, cigar, sun*'; too (the French tout)^ meaning "all, ever}^- 
thing " ; and ne pa (whether pronounced as in French, or other- 
wise, we are not told), signifying "not." JPetee-petee^ the name 
given to the boy by his sister, is apparently the French petit ^ 
little ; and ma, I, may be from the French moi, me. If, however, 
the child was reall}^ able to catch and remember so readily these 
foreign sounds at such an early age, and to interweave them into a 
speech of her own, it would merely show how readily and strongly 
in her case the language-making faculty was developed. 

Of words formed by imitation of sounds, the language shows 
barely a trace. The mewing of the cat evidently suggested the 
word mea, which signified both cat and furs. For the other voca- 
bles which make up this speech, no origin can be conjectured. We 
can merely notice that in some of the words the liking which 
children and some races of men have for the repetition of sounds is 
apparent. Thus we have migno-migno, signifying " water, wash, 
bath"; go-go, "delicacies, as sugar, cand}^, or dessert"; and 
waia-waiar, " black, darkness, or a negro." There is, as will be 
seen from these examples, no special tendency to the monosyllabic 
form. Gummigar, we are told, signifies " all the substantial of 
the table, such as bread, meat, vegetables, etc." ; and the same 
word is used to designate the cook. The boy, it is added, does 
not use this word, but uses gna-migna, which the girl considers a 
mistake. From which we may gather that even at that tender age 
the form of their language had become with them an object of 
thought ; and we may infer, moreover, that the language was not 
invented solely b3^ the girl, but that both the children contributed 
to frame it. 

Of miscellaneous words may be mentioned gar, " horse" ; deer, 
" money of any kind " ; heer, " literature, books, or school " ; peer, 
" ball" ; hau, " soldier, music" ; odo, " to send for, to go out, to 
take away"; keh, "to soil"; pa-ma, "to go to sleep, pillow, 
bed." The variety of acceptations which each word was capable of 
receiving is exemplified in many ways. Thus feu might become 
an adjective, as ne-pafeu, " not warm." The verb odo had many 
meanings, according to its position or the words which accom- 
panied it. Ma odo, " I (want to) go out" ; gar odo, " send for 
the horse"; too odo, "all gone." Gadn signified God; and we 
are told, " When it rains, the children often run to the window, 



16 SECTION H. 

and call out, Gactn odo migjio-migno, feu odo^ which means, ' God 
take away the rain, and send the sun'; odo before the object 
meaning ' to take away,' and after the object, 'to send.'" From 
this remark and example we learn, not merely that the language 
had — as all real languages must have — its rules of construction, 
but that these were sometimes different from the English rules. 
This also appears in the form mea waia-waiar, " dark furs " (lit- 
erally, " furs dark "), where the adjective follows its substantive. 

The odd and unexpected associations which in aU languages 
govern the meaning of words are apparent in this brief vocabu- 
lary. We can gather from it that the parents were Catholics, and 
punctual in church observances. The words papa and mamma 
were used separately in their ordinary sense ; but when linked 
together in the compound term papa-mamma^ thej^ signified (ac- 
cording to the connection, we may presume) " church, pra3^er- 
book, cross, priest, to say their praj'ers." -Saw was "soldier"; 
but, we are told, from seeing the bishop in his mitre and vest- 
ments, thinking he was a soldier, t\iQj applied the word bau to him. 
Gar odo properly signified ' ' send for the horse " ; but as the 
children frequently saw their father, when a carriage was wanted, 
write an order and send it to the stable, they came to use the same 
expression {gar odo) for pencil and paper. 

There is no appearance of infiection, properly speaking, in the 
language ; and this is only what might be expected. Very young 
children rarel}" use inflected forms in any language. The English 
child of three or four years saj's, " Mar}^ cup," for " Mary's cup" ; 
and " Dog bite Harry" will represent every tense and mood. It is 
by no means improbable that, if the children had continued to use 
their own language for a few years longer, inflections would have 
been developed in it, as we see that peculiar forms of construction 
and novel compounds — which are the germs of inflection — had 
alread}^ made their appearance. 

These two recorded instances of child-languages have led to fur- 
ther inquiries, which, though pursued onl}' for a brief period, and in 
a limited field, have shown that cases of this sort are b}^ no means 
uncommon. An esteemed phj'sician of m}^ acquaintance, whose 
childhood was passed in the cit}^ of Kingston, Ontario, has informed 
me of a case within his own knowledge which bears a remarkable 
resemblance to that of the Albany children. It occurred in that 
city nearly thirty years ago, when my informant was about seven 



ADDRESS BY HORATIO HALE. 17 

years old ; but his recollection of it is perfectly distinct. A widower 
with several children, one of whom was a bo}" between four and 
five years old, married a widow with a single child, — a girl, some- 
what younger than the bo3\ They lived directly opposite the 
residence of my friend's parents, and he knew the children inti- ' 
matel}'. The boy was unusuallj^ backward in his speech, and at the 
time of the marriage spoke imperfectly. He and the little girl soon 
became inseparable playmates, and formed a language of their own, 
which was unintelligible to their parents and friends. They had 
names of their own invention for all the objects about them, and 
must have had a corresponding supply of verbs and other parts 
of speech, as their talk was fluent and incessant. M}' informant, 
with his brother and the other children who lived near them, often 
listened to this chatter with great amusement, and came at last to 
recognize a number of the most common expressions. The only 
one which he can now remember was the word for cat, which 
fastened itself in his mind by its oddit3^ The little philologists 
had a favorite cat, which they often held aloft for the admiration of 
the spectators across the street, shouting to them its extraordinarj- 
name of shindikiJc. This term, like the solitary' word preserved 
of the speech of the Boston children, proves at least that the lan- 
guage had passed bej'ond the infantile or Chinese stage, when every 
word is a monos^^llable, usuallj' ending in a vowel. The mother of 
the little girl became at length so much disquieted b}^ the persistency 
of the children in refusing to speak English, that she finall}^ re- 
sorted to the expedient of separating them, and placed the daughter 
for a time under the care of a relative residing at a distance. The 
children soon forgot their abnormal speech, and, as both the par- 
ents are dead, it is not likely that any more relics of it will be 
recovered. 

How soon such memories fade from the minds of both speakers 
and hearers, and how little attention such incidents attract, is shown 
bj' another case, which occurred some twenty years ago in the fam- 
il}^ of one of m}- nearest neighbors and friends, but was so little 
noticed that I had never heard of it until the present year. In 
this famil}- the two 3'oungest children — a bo}' and a girl — were 
twins, and as usually happens, were left much together. When 
they were three or four years old the}^ were accustomed, as their 
elder sister informs me, to talk together in a language which no 
one else understood. The other members of the family called it 

2 



18 SECTION H. 

their ' ' gibberish," but otherwise paid httle attention to it. The 
father would sometimes say, " Hear those children chattering ! " 
and the other members of the famil}^ would listen, and smile at the 
stream of unintelligible sounds. The twins were wont to climb into 
their father's carriage in the stable, and " chatter away," as my in- 
formant says, for hours in this strange language. Their sister 
remembers that it sounded as though the words were quite short. 
But the single word which survives in the family recollection is a 
dissyllable, — the word for milk, which was cully. The little girl 
accompanied her speech with gestures, but the boy did not. As 
they grew older, they gradually gave up then- peculiar speech. The 
boy is dead. The girl, now an intelligent and accomplished young 
lad}^, has totally forgotten the words of their childish speech, though 
she remembers well the fact of using it and the amusement it ex- 
cited. She remembers also that tlie others spoke of them as " talk- 
ing Scotch," or " in Scotch fashion." Their father, a well-educated 
professional gentleman, was of Scottish birth, but had lived much 
in England ; and neither he nor any of the children had any marked 
accent differing from that of ordinary English speech. 

A case which recalls that of the Boston boys is related to me by 
a lady friend who was educated in Toronto. She remembers per- 
fectly^ well the amusement caused, in the school which she attended 
in her early childhood, by two little bo3's, sons of a wealthy gentle- 
man of that city, who were accustomed to converse together in a 
language of their own. Their ages were about five or six, one 
being somewhat more than a j^ear older than the other. The 
3^oungest, however, was slightly the taller of the two. The}' were 
fine, intelligent boys, and were always together, both at home and 
in the school. My informant knew the famil}', which was a ratl^er 
large one, — five boys and a girl. These children were left much 
to themselves, and had a language of their own, in which the}^ 
always conversed. The other children in the school used to listen 
to them as they chattered together, and laugh heartil}' at the 
strange speech of which the}' could not understand a word. The 
boys spoke English with difficulty, and verj^ imperfectl}', like per- 
sons struggling to express their ideas in a foreign tongue. In 
speaking it, they had to eke out their words with many gestures 
and signs to make themselves understood ; but in talking together 
in their own language, they used no gestures, and spoke ver}- 
fluently. She remembers that the words which they used seemed 



ADDKESS BY HOKATIO HALE. 19 

quite short. In imitating from memory their mode of speech she 
uses monosyllables. They had a nurse, an intelligent middle-aged 
woman, who brought them to the school in the morning, and came 
for them in the afternoon. She had had the care of them from in- 
fanc}', and understood their language, but did not speak it. She was 
accustomed to speak to them in English, and they would reply to 
her in their own tongue. They learned but little at the school, and 
had apparently been sent there chiefly to accustom them to be with 
children of their own age, and to learn to speak like them. My 
friend knew them in after life, as grown-up young men, when they 
spoke English like other people. 

But it is needless to multiply examples. The instances thus 
recorded do not b}' an}' means exhaust the list. I have not yet 
had the fortunate opportunity — which Dr. Hun enjoyed and used 
to such good advantage — of personalh' hearing and investigating 
such a child-language. But as it is evident that its development is 
not a fact of very rare occurrence, we may hope, now that atten- 
tion has been drawn to the matter, that this interesting subject of 
inquiry will soon be thoroughly studied by competent observers. 
These cases, it must be remembered, are, after all, merely intensi- 
fied forms of a phenomenon which is of constant recurrence. The 
inclination of very young children to employ words and forms of 
speech of their own is well known, though it is only under peculiar 
circumstances that this language acquires the extent and the perma- 
nence which it attained in the cases now recorded. Along with 
this inclination of children, a corresponding disposition of their 
elders in conversing with them will be noticed. The " babj'^-talk " 
in which mothers and nurses in all communities, civilized and 
savage, are wont to indulge, is in some respects totally distinct 
from their ordinary speech. It is utterly devoid of inflections, of 
articles, and of pronouns, has its own pronunciation, its own syntax 
and construction, and many peculiar words. The importance of 
this bab3'-talk as an element of linguistic science has been recog- 
nized by eminent scientific investigators. Dr. Tylor, in the fifth 
chapter of his work on " Primitive Culture," touches upon this sub- 
ject with some noteworth}'- remarks and suggestions, of which the 
general tenor is strikingly confirmed by the speech of the Albany 
children. " Chiklren's language," he observes, " may give a valu- 
able lesson to the philologist." After quoting many examples of 
Infantile words in use in various countries, he adds : "In this 



20 SECTION H. 

language, the theory of root-sounds fairly breaks down." *' It is 
obvious," he continues, " that the leading principle of their forma- 
tion is, not to adopt words distinguished by the expressive charac- 
ter of their sound, but to choose somehow a fixed word to answer 
a given purpose." So Mr. George P. Marsh, in his "Lectures on 
the English Language," remarks, that the question whether the 
power of speech is a faculty or an art may be answered, " in a gen- 
eral way, by saying that the use of articulate language is a faculty 
inherent in man, though we cannot often detect any natural and 
necessary connection between a particular object and the vocal 
sound by which this or that people presents it." And he adds : 
" There can be little doubt that a colony of children, reared with- 
out hearing sounds uttered by those around them, would at length 
form for themselves a speech." Many other citations might be 
made, showing that philologists have more than once been fairly on 
the track of the cause to which the origin of linguistic families is 
diie. If they have failed to follow to its conclusion the path into 
which their intuitions had led them, it has simplj- been from lack 
of the evidence now at hand. 

In the light of the facts which have now been set forth, it becomes 
evident that, to insure the creation of a speech which shall be the 
parent of a new linguistic stock, all that is needed is that two or 
more young children should be placed by themselves in a condition 
where they will be entirely, or in a large degree, free from the pres- 
ence and influence of their elders. They must, of course, continue 
in this condition long enough to grow up, to form a household, and 
to have descendants to whom they can communicate their new 
speech. We have only to inquire under what circumstances an 
occurrence of this nature can be expected to take place. 

There was once a time when no beings endowed with articulate 
speech existed on this planet. When such beings appeared, whether 
at one centre or at several, the spread of this human population 
over the earth would necessarih' be gradual. So very slow and 
gradual, indeed, has it been, that many outlying tracts — Iceland, 
Madeira, the Azores, the Mauritius, St. Helena, the Falkland 
Islands, Bounty Island, and others — have only been peopled 
within recent historical times, and some of them during the present 
century. This diffusion of population would take place in various 
waj's, and under many different impulses ; — sometimes as the 
natural result of increase and overcrowding, sometimes through the 



ADDRESS BY HORATIO HALE. 21 

dispersion caused hj wars, frequentl}^ from a spirit of adventure, 
and occasionally by accident, as when a canoe was drifted on an 
unknown shore. In most instances, a considerable party, compris- 
ing many families, would emigrate together. Such a partj^ would 
cany their language with them ; and the change of speech which 
their isolation would produce would be merely a dialectical differ- 
ence, such as distinguishes the Greek from the Sanscrit, or the 
Ethiopic from the Arabic. The basis of the language would remain 
the same. No length of time, so far as can be inferred from the 
present state of our knowledge, would suffice to disguise the re- 
semblance indicating the common origin of such dialect-languages. 
But there is another mode in which the spread of population might 
take place, that would lead in this respect to a very different result. 
If a single pair, man and wife, should wander off into an uninhab- 
ited region, and there, after a few 3^ears, both perish, leaving a fam- 
ily of 5'oung children to grow up by themselves and frame their 
ftwn speech, the facts which have been adduced will show that this 
speech might, and probably would, be an entirely novel language. 
Its inflections would certainly be different from those of the parent 
tongue, because the speech of children under five years of age has 
commonly no inflections. The great mass of vocables, also, would 
probably be new. The strong language-making instinct of the 
younger children would be sufficient to overpower any feeble mem- 
ory which their older companions might retain of the parental 
idiom. The natural disposition of the oldest child, indeed, would 
be to yield to the youngest in this regard. He would feel it to be 
essential that he should make his little brother or sister understand 
him, and he would adopt without hesitation any manner of speech 
that would insure this object. The baby-talk^ the " children's lan- 
guage," would become the mother-tongue of the new communitj', 
and of the nation that would spring from it. 

Those who are famihar with the habits of the hunting tribes of 
America know how common it is for single families to wander off 
from the main band in this manner, — sometimes following the 
game, sometimes exiled for offences against the tribal law, some- ' 
times impelled by the all-powerful passion of love, when the man 
and woman belong to families or classes at deadly feud or forbid- 
den to intermarry. In these latter cases, the object of the fugitives 
would be to place as wide a space as possible between themselves 
and their irate kindred. In modern times, when the whole country 



22 SECTION H. 

is occupied, their flight would merely carry them into the territory 
of another tribe, among whom, if well received, they would quickly 
be absorbed. But in the primitive period, when a vast uninhabited 
region stretched before them, it would be easy for them to find 
some sheltered nook or fruitful valley, in which they might hope 
to remain secure, and rear their j'oung brood unmolested bj' human 
neighbors. 

If, under such circumstances, disease or the casualties of a hunt- 
er's life should cany oflf the parents, the survival of the children 
would, it is evident, depend mainl}^ upon the nature of the climate 
and the ease with which food could be procured at all seasons of the 
year. In ancient Europe, after the present climatal conditions were 
established, it is doubtful if a family of children under ten years of 
age could have lived through a single winter. We are not, there- 
fore, surprised to find that no more than four or five linguistic stocks 
are represented in Europe, and that all of them, except the Basque, 
are believed, on good evidence, to have been of comparatively late 
introduction. Even the Basque is traced by some, with much proba- 
bility, to a source in North Africa. Of northern America, east of 
the Rock}' Mountains and north of the tropics, the same ma}^ be 
said. The climate and the scarcit}- of food in winter forbid us to 
suppose that a brood of orphan children could have survived, ex- 
cept possibl}', hy a fortunate chance, in some favored spot on the 
shore of the Mexican Gulf, where shell-fish, berries, and edible 
roots are abundant and easy of access. 

But there is one region where Nature seems to offer herself as 
the willing nurse and bountiful step-mother of the feeble and unpro- 
tected. Of all countries on the globe, there is probabl}^ not one in 
which a little flock of very young children would find the means of 
sustaining existence more readily than in California. Its wonder- 
ful climate, mild and equable beyond example, is well known. Mr,. 
Cronise, in liis volume on the '' Natural Wealth of California," tells 
us, that " the monthly mean of the thermometer at San Francisco 
in December, the coldest month, is 50° ; in September, the warm- 
est month, Gl°." And he adds: ''Although the State reaches 
to tiie latitude of Plymouth Bay on the north, the climate, for its 
whole length, is as mild as that of the regions near the tropics. 
Half the months are rainless. Snow and ice are almost strangers, 
except in the high altitudes. There are fully two hundred cloud- 
less days in every year. Roses bloom in the open air through all 



ADDRESS BY HOKATIO HALE. 23 

seasons." Not less remarkable than this exquisite climate is the 
astonishing variet}^ of food, of kinds which seem to offer themselves 
to the tender hands of children. Berries of many sorts — straw- 
berries, blackberries, currants, raspberries, and salmon-berries — 
are indigenous and abundant. Large fruits and edible nuts on low 
and pendent boughs may be said, in Milton's phrase, to " hang 
amiable." Mr. Cronise enumerates, among others, the wild cherry 
and plum, which " grow on bushes " ; the barberry, or false grape 
{Berberis herbosa)^ a "low shrub," which bears^ edible fruit; 
and the Californian horse-chestnut {^sculus Calif or iiicci) , " a low, 
spreading tree or shrub, seldom exceeding fifteen feet high," which 
" bears abundant fruit, much used by the Indians." Then there 
are nutritious roots of various kinds, maturing at different seasons. 
Fish swarm in the rivers, and are taken by the simplest means. 
In the spring, Mr. Powers informs us, the whitefish "crowd the 
creeks in such vast numbers that the Indians, by simpl}^ throwing 
in a little brushwood to impede their motion, can literally scoop 
them out." Shell-fish and grubs abound, and are greedily eaten by 
the natives. Earth-worms, which are found everywhere and at all 
seasons, are a favorite article of diet. As to clothing, we are told 
by the authority just cited that " on the plains all adult males and 
all children up to ten or twelve went perfectly naked, — while the 
women wore onlj^ a narrow strip of deer-skin around the waist." 
Need we wonder that, in such a mild and fruitful region, a great 
number of separate tribes were found, speaking languages which a 
careful investigation has classed in nineteen distinct linguistic 
stocks ? 

The climate of the Oregon coast region, though colder than that 
of California, is still far milder and more equable than that of the 
same latitude in the east ; and the abundance of edible fruits, roots, 
river-fish, and other food of easy attainment, is very great. A 
family of 3'oung children, if one of them were old enough to take 
care of the rest, could easily be reared to maturity in a sheltered 
nook of this genial and fruitful land. We are not, therefore, sur- 
prised to find that the number of linguistic stocks in this narrow 
district, though less than in California, is more than twice as large 
as in the whole of Europe, and that the greater portion of these 
stocks are clustered near the Californian boundary. 

It is not, however, necessary to suppose that in ever}' instance 
both parents had perished. If only one of them died, leaving four 



24 SECTION H. 

or five children, — the oldest perhaps not more than six years old, 
— the surviving parent, having no adult companion to converse 
with, would infalliblj^ as a matter of absolute necessit}^ adopt the 
language of the children, and to a large extent fall in with their 
wa3's of thought. The only difference would be, that when, with 
the growth of the children in years and intelligence, grammatical 
inflections came to be gradually developed, these inflections, if not 
the same as those of the parent's mother-tongue, would probabty be 
of a similar cast. Indeed, this to some extent might be expected, 
even when both parents had perished. Some reminiscences of 
the parental speech would probably remain with the older children, 
and be revived and strengthened as their faculties gained force. 
Thus we may account for the fact which has perplexed all inquirers, 
that certain unexpected and sporadic resemblances, both in gram- 
mar and in vocabulary, which can hardly be deemed purel}' acci- 
dental, sometimes crop up between the most dissimilar languages. 
Such are the surprising resemblances between some of the Ar3*an 
and Semitic numerals ; and such are the curious concordances be- 
tween some of the Arj'an and the Malaj'o-Poh'nesian roots, which 
perplexed and for a time misled so great a philologist as Bopp. 
Among languages of the polys3^nthetic class, few are more unlike 
than the Algonkin, the Iroquois, and the Dakota; 3'et in all three 
the word for foot is almost identical. This word is sit^ or, without 
the terminal consonant, si (in English orthograph}^ see). A word 
so brief, distinct, and eas}^ of utterance would be likely to survive 
in the memory of any child of four or five 3'ears who had heard 
it as frequently repeated bj^ the mother as this word would cer- 
tainly be. 

We must also remember that a certain similarit}^ in the form or 
mould of all idioms spoken by tribes of the same race, even when 
these idioms originated from such child-languages, would be apt to 
arise, partly from similarity of character and circumstances, and 
parti}" from the inherited conformation of the brain. Of the former 
class of influences, — the effect of the environing circumstances, 
first on the character and then on tlie speech, — we have an elab- 
orate and most suggestive discussion in Mr. Byrne's recent work 
on the " rrincii)les of the Structure of Language." As regards 
the inherited powers of mind, we have to consider that when, 
in any group of childr(?n, the faculty of language was strong, their 
speech would probably develop into a highly complex idiom, like 



ADDKESS BY HORATIO HALE. 25 

the Arj^an, the Semitic, the Basque, or the Algonkin ; when this 
faculty was less powerful, the speech would be simpler, like the 
Mala3^an, the Mongol, and the Maya, ; and when it was Yerj weak, 
the language would remain, like the Chinese and Anamese, in the 
monosyllabic or infantile stage. It is proper, further, to bear in 
mind, that a strong or weak capacity for language does not neces- 
sarily implj^ a corresponding strength or weakness of the other 
intellectual powers. On this point Professor Whitney, in his '' Life 
and Growth of Language," well observes : " The Chinese is a most 
striking example of how a community of a ver}^ high grade of gen- 
eral ability may exhibit an extreme inaptitude for fertile linguistic 
development. We ma}' suitably compare this with the grades of 
aptitude shown by various races for plastic, or pictorial, or musical 
art, which b}' no means measure their capacity for other intellectual 
or spiritual products." 

A glance at other linguistic provinces will show how aptly this 
explanation of the origin of language-stocks everywhere applies. 
Tropical Brazil is a region which combines perpetual summer with 
a profusion of edible fruits and other varieties of food, not less 
abundant than in California. Here, if anywhere, there should be a 
great number of totally distinct languages. We learn on the best 
authorit}', that of Baron J. J. von Tschudi, in the Introduction to 
his recent work on the "Organism of the Khetshua Language," 
that this is the fact. He saj's : " I possess a collection made by 
the well-known naturalist, Joh. Natterer, during his residence of 
man}' years in Brazil, of more than a hundred languages, lexically 
completely distinct, from the interior of Brazil." And he adds : 
" The number of so-called isolated languages — that is, of such as, 
according to our present information, show no relationship to an}^ 
other, and which therefore form distinct stocks of greater or less 
extent — is in South America verj^ large, and must, on an approx- 
imate estimate, amount to many hundreds. It will perhaps be pos- 
sible hereafter to include many of them in larger families, but there 
must still remain a considerable number for which this will not be 
possible." 

The explanation which the learned writer gives of this great 
diversity of languages is that which has been heretofore received 
by most philologists. "The cause of this remarkable phenomenon," 
he writes, "is evidently to be found in the subdivision of the 
Indian population. The evidence of language leads to the conclu- 



26 SECTION H. 

sion that the separation of families and tribes from the main body 
of the descendants of the first in-comers must have taken place in 
very early times. In their wanderings toward the south, the de- 
scendants of these straggling hordes must have separated again 
and again. Man}^ of them may have been brought into positions 
which were remote from the great lines of migration, ma}" there 
have remained more or less isolated, may have naturally, in their 
new relations and surroundings, formed a new vocabulary, and 
have cast aside and forgotten much of their old speech as useless 
in their new circumstances. But this forgetting and new-making 
took place not only in the names given to objects, but in all lin- 
guistic expressions as well, including the structure of words and 
sentences. Languages wholty new arose. Frequentl}^ a single 
famil}', which broke off from the horde, and moved away in a 
separate course, has given rise to an entirely new speech." 

If by the phrase ' ' a single famil}' " we could understand such a 
group of young children as has just been described, this explanation 
would exactly accord with the view proposed in this paper. This, 
however, is evident^ not the writer's meaning ; and, with all due 
deference to the eminent and justty esteemed author, I may venture 
to affirm that the process which he describes is opposed to all expe- 
rience and observation. There is no instance known of a tribe 
or family of grown-up persons losing their original language in 
the way he has supposed. The branches of tlie great Malayo- 
Poh'nesian family, scattered over a thousand islands, large and 
small, from Madagascar to Hawaii, have retained everywhere the 
mass of their vocabulary and grammar with remarkable uniformity. 
The thorough analyses furnished by Dr. F. Mtiller, in his latest 
work, leave no room for doubt on this point. It is plain that 
each island has been peopled b}' one or more canoe-loads of emi- 
grants, bringing their language with them. A still more striking 
example is to be noted in Australia, where a vast region, larger than 
Brazil, is found inhabited by hundreds, perhaps thousands, of pett}" 
tribes, as completel}' isolated as those of South America, but all 
speaking languages of one stock. And if we inquire why many 
different linguistic stocks have not arisen in that region, as in Cali- 
fornia, Brazil, and Central Africa, the explanation presents itself at 
once. Though the climate is as mild as in anj- of these regions, 
the other conditions are such as would make it impossible for an 
isolated group of young children to survive. The whole of Aus- 



ADDRESS BY HORATIO HALE. 27 

tralia is subject to severe droughts, and is so scantily provided 
with edible products that the aborigines are often reduced to the 
greatest straits. It is well known that an entire exploring party 
of white men, well provided with fire-arms, perished of famine in 
attempting to traverse the interior. The suspicious and unsocial 
character of the Australian natives, the smallness of their tribes, 
their wide dispersion, and the little communication between them, 
are all well-known facts. If linguistic stocks could arise in the 
way supposed by Herr von Tschudi, there should be hundreds in 
Australia ; but there is only one. 

A curious ethnological fact, which tends strongly to confirm the 
view of the origin of linguistic stocks now proposed, is the circum- 
stance that, as a general thing, each linguistic family has its own 
mythology. This remarkable fact has been noticed, and well set 
forth, by Major Powell ; and it had, I may add, already occurred to 
myself in connection with the present inquiry, in which it finds its 
sufficient explanation. Of course, when the childish pair or group, 
in their isolated abode, framed their new language and transmitted 
it to their descendants, they must necessarily at the same time have 
framed a new religion for themselves and their posterity ; for the 
religious instinct, like the language-making faculty, is a part of the 
mental outfit of the human race. 

But we are now brought face to face with another problem of 
great difficult}'. The view which has just been presented shows 
that all the vast variet}^ of languages on earth may have arisen 
within a comparatively brief period ; and man}' facts seem to show 
that the peopling of the globe by the present nations and tribes 
of men is a quite recent event. The traditions of the natives of 
America, North and South, have been gathered and studied of late 
years, by scientific inquirers, with great care and valuable results. 
All these traditions, Eskimo, Algonkin, Iroquois, Choctaw, Mexi- 
can, Maya, Chibcha, Peruvian, represent the people who preserved 
them as new-comers in the regions in which they were found by the 
whites. Ethnologists are aware that there is not a tradition, a mon- 
ument, or a relic of any kind, on this continent, which requires us to 
carry back the history of any of its aboriginal tribes, of the existing 
race, for a period of three thousand years. In tlie Pacific Islands 
the recent investigations have had a still more striking and definite 
result. We know, on sufficiently clear evidence, the times when 
most of the groups, from New Zealand to the Sandwich Islands, 



28 SECTION H. 

were first settled b}^ their Polj^nesian occupants. None of the dates 
go back beyond the Christian era. Some of them come down to 
the last century. In Australia the able missionary investigators 
have ascertained that the natives had a distinct tradition of the 
arrival of their ancestors, who entered by the northwest coast. It 
is most unlikely that, among such a barbarous and wandering race, 
a tradition of this nature should be more than two thousand 3'ears 
old. Probably it is much less ancient. We know positively that 
the neighboring group of New Zealand was settled only about five 
hundred 3'ears ago. Passing on to the old continent, we find that 
the Japanese historical traditions go back, and that doubtfullj', only 
to a period about twenty-five hundred years ago ; those of China, 
only about four thousand 3'ears ; those of the Arj^ans, vaguel}', to 
about the same time ; the Assyrians, more surely, a little longer ; 
and the Egyptians to the date fixed by Lepsius for Menes, not 
quite four thousand years before Christ. No evidence of tradition, 
or of any monument of social man, points to his existence on the 
earth at a period exceeding seven thousand 3'ears before the present 
time. Yet the investigations which have followed the discoveries 
of Boucher de Perthes have satisfied the great majorit}^ of scientific 
men that human beings have been living on the globe for a term 
which must be computed, not bj^ thousands of 3'ears, but b}" tens 
and probabl}^ hundreds of thousands. Writers of all creeds, and 
of all opinions on other subjects, concur in the view that the exist- 
ence of man goes back to a remote period, in comparison with 
which the monuments of Egj'pt are but of ^^esterda}^ ; and 3'et 
these monuments, as has been said, are the oldest constructions of 
social man which are known to exist. How shall we explain this 
surprising discrepancy? How shall we account for the fact that 
man has existed for possibl}" two hundred thousand 3'ears, and has 
only begun to form societies and to build cities within less than 
seven thousand years? In other words, how, as scientific men, 
shall we bring the conclusions of geology and palaeontolog}^ into 
harmon}" with those of archaeology and history? 

Fortunately, the geologists and physiologists themselves, by their 
latest discoveries, have furnished the means of clearing up the per- 
plexities which their earlier researches had occasioned. We learn 
from these discoveries that, while a being entitled to the name of 
man has occupied some portions of the earth during a vast space 
of time, in one and perhaps two geological eras, the acquisition b}^ 



ADDRESS BY HORATIO HALE. 29 

this being of the power of speech is in all probabilit}^ an event of 
recent occurrence. The main facts on which this opinion is based 
must necessarily, in this summar}^, be very briefly stated. For 
other evidences, reference must be made to the sources where the}" 
will be found fully set forth. 

The question of the existence of man in the tertiary era has been 
so thoroughly and ably discussed b}' my predecessor in this office. 
Professor Morse, in his addi'ess at the Philadelphia meeting in 
1884, that I need not add a word on that subject. The fact that 
man existed in the subsequent period, which is known among Eng- 
lish geologists as the pleistocene era and in France more commonly 
as the quaternary age, is questioned by no one. The men of that 
era, the Palaeolithic men, as they are styled, are distinguished by 
the investigators, as is well known, into two distinct races, belonging 
to widely different epochs. These races are variously designated by 
the eminent authorities to whom I shall have occasion to refer, and 
who, while they differ on some points, are on the the main question 
of the existence and the distinction of these races fully In accord. 
These authorities, it may here be stated, are, for France, Prof, 
de Quatrefages and Prof. G. de Mortillet, and for England, Prof. 
Boyd Dawkins. The views of M. de Quatrefages are set forth 
in his work entitled "Hommes Fossiles et Hommes Sauvages," 
published in 1884, and in his well-known treatise on " The Human 
Species," of which the eighth edition has appeared during the present 
year. The work of M. de Mortillet, " Le Prehistorique," appeared 
in 1883, and that of Prof. Boyd Dawkins, " Early Man in Britain," 
was published in 1880. Those who had the pleasure of hearing 
Professor Dawkins at the Montreal meeting of the British Associa- 
tion, in 1884, are aware that his researches subsequent to the publi- 
cation of that work had only confirmed the views expressed in it. 
I have also referred to the work of Dr. Paul Topinard, " L' Anthro- 
pologic," of which the fourth edition appeared in 1884 ; to the work 
of Prof. George H. von Meyer, of Zurich, on the "Organs of 
Speech" (1884), to the monograph of Dr. Robert Baume, of Ber- 
hn, on the " Jaw-Fragments of LaNaulette and the Schipka Cave" 
(1884), and the work of Prof. Robert Hartmann, of Berlin, on 
"Anthropoid Apes," which has just appeared. 

Professor Dawkins styles the earlier Palaeolithic race the " River- 
drift men," and the later "the Cave-men." The River-drift men 
were, in his view, hunters and savages of the lowest grade. In his 



30 SECTION H. 

opinion, the race is now " as completely extinct as the woolly rhi- 
noceros or the cave bear." We have, he considers, no clue to its 
ethnology ; and its relation to the race that succeeded it is doubt- 
ful. The Cave-men were of a much higher order, and were espe- 
cially remarkable for their artistic talents. He is inclined to believe 
that their descendants survive in the Eskimo ; and whether we 
accept this view or not, we learn from it that, in the opinion of this 
eminent investigator, the Cave-men were men of the present race. 
M. de Quatrefages designates the two races from noted localities 
where their osseous remains were found. The Eiver-drift man is 
with him the "man of Canstadt," from the place near which the 
portion of a cranium belonging to this race was discovered ; and 
the Cave-man is the " man of Cro-Magnon," a well-known locality 
where several skeletons of this race were brought to light. M. de 
Mortillet draws his designations from the places in which the im- 
plements used by the different races are found in their most typical 
form. The man of the earlier race is with him the " Chellean man," 
from Chelles, a place in the Department of Seine-et-Marne ; while 
the later is the Magdalenian man, from La Madeleine in the De- 
partment of La Dordogne. He makes two intermediate races, the 
Mousterian and the Solutrean, which Professor Dawkins is inclined 
to combine with the Magdalenian in a single race, corresponding 
to his Cave-men. But in one respect M. de Mortillet makes an 
even stronger distinction than that of Professor Dawkins between 
the earlier and later races. Professor Dawkins expresses no opin- 
ion on the question whether the River-drift men were or were not 
endowed with the faculty of speech. Prof, de Mortillet is clear 
that they were not. This view might fairly enough, as will be seen, 
be based on the pithecoid character of their remains, and the low 
grade of intellect shown by their implements ; but M. de Mortillet 
finds a remarkable, and, in his opinion, a decisive evidence, in a 
lower jaw belonging to this race, which was discovered in 1866 in 
the cave of La Naulette in Belgium. It is only a fragment, but it 
contains the central curve, or symphj'sis, forming the chin. In the 
inner centre of the ordinary human jaw, there is at this curve a 
small bony projection or excrescence, usually somewhat rough to the 
touch, which is known to Enghsh and American anatomists as the 
"mental tubercle," or "the genial tubercle." B}^ French Writers 
it is termed the apopTiyse gmi^ or genial apophysis, and by German 
authors the spina mentalis. These epithets, "mental" and "ge- 



ADDRESS BY HORATIO HALE. 31 

nial," it may be remarked, are not the common English adjectives 
with which we are famiUar. "Mental" is here derived, not from 
the Latin mens, the mind, but from mentum, the chin ; and, in the 
same wa}^, " genial" in this case is to be referred, not to the Greek 
yei/os, family or kindred, but to yevvs (or its derivative yevetas), 
which means in that language the chin or under-jawbone. With 
this preface, I give in full the author's description of this remark- 
able relic. The bone is small, and is supposed to have been that 
of a female. But though small, it is a powerful jawbone. " In 
fact," he continues, " the essential character of this fossil is its ro- 
bustness, if I ma}' so express myself. The bone throughout is thick 
and stock}- , and thus approaches much nearer the jaws of anthro- 
poids than those of man. The chin, in lieu of projecting forward 
beyond the vertical line, inclines backward. It is something inter- 
mediate between the man and the monkey. The sockets of the 
teeth show that the molars, in place of diminishing from the first 
to the* last, were developed in the opposite wslj. Finall}', in the 
middle of the inner curve of the jaw, in place of a little excrescence 
called the ' genial tubercle,' there is a hollow, as with monkeys. 
We may, then, say that this human reUc is the most pithecoid that 
has yet been found." The inference to be derived from this forma- 
tion is thus set forth by our author: "Speech, or articulate lan- 
guage, is produced by movements of the tongue in certain ways. 
These movements are effected mainly by the action of the muscle 
inserted in the genial tubercle. The existence of this tubercle is 
therefore essential to the possession of language. Animals which 
have not the power of speech do not possess the genial tubercle. 
If, then, this tubercle is lacking in the Naulette jawbone, it is be- 
cause the man of Neanderthal, the ' Chellean man,' was incapable 
of articulate speech." 

It must not be supposed, from tlijs brief description, that M. de 
Mortillet imagined that the genio-glossal muscle, the muscle which 
moves the tongue, and which in fact, as Prof, von Meyer states, 
contributes most to the form of that member, was lacking in the 
Chellean man, as it certainly is not lacking in the anthropoid apes. 
It is not the muscle itself, but the mode of its insertion, which is 
to be regarded. In the apes and other lower animals, where the 
tongue is mainly used to aid in taking, masticating, and swallow- 
ing food, much less freedom of motion is required for it than in man, 
for whom its chief use is in the many delicate movements required 



32 SECTION H. 

in framing the elements of articulate utterance. It is for this greater 
freedom that the insertion of the muscle — or rather of the muscles, 
for there are two of these — in the genial tubercle or tubercles (for 
there are also two of these) is required. Or, to speak still more 
precisely, it should rather be said that it is by the incessant action 
of the muscles pulling on the bone in these varied movements, that 
the tubercles themselves must be deemed to have been developed. 
Such is the explanation given by the able anatomists whom I have 
consulted on this curious and important point. 

It will seem that a single jawbone affords but scanty evidence on 
which to base so momentous a conclusion. But confirmation has 
not been wanting. In August, 1880, Professor Maschka found in 
the Schipka cave, in Northeastern Moravia, among bones of the 
elephant, rhinoceros, and other animals of the pleistocene era, a 
fragment of a human jawbone, bearing a remarkable resemblance 
to that of the Naulette cave. Like the latter, it inclined backward 
at the chin, being in this respect intermediate between the- jaw of 
the ape and that of the man ; and, as in the Naulette jaw, the genial 
tubercle was wanting. The two jawbones have been submitted to 
a most careful and thorough scrutiny and analysis by Dr. Eobert 
Baume, a distinguished writer on dentistry, who has brought out 
some novel and important points. He shows that, fi*om the great 
backward inclination of the chin, the jaw must, when the mouth was 
open, have pressed upon the larynx and closed it entirel}^, unless 
the individual to whom the jaw belonged was of a much more 
prognathous type — or, in other words, had the lower part of the 
visage much more projecting — than is known in an}' now existing 
race. His conclusion is, that there lived in the diluvial or quater- 
nary age races of men who were markedl}^ inferior to the lowest 
races now existing. His view of the total disappearance of these 
ancient races, therefore, harmonizes entirely with that of Professor 
Dawkins. 

This view is further confirmed by an examination of all the 
crania which are believed, on good grounds, to belong to this 
pristine people. These skulls are not numerous, but they are 
suflScient in number to characterize a race, and they are all of one 
cast. The Canstadt skull, the Neanderthal skull, the fragment of 
the Eguisheim skull and that of the skull found at Briix in Aus- 
tria, as well as the skull lately discovered at PodhaW in Bohemia, 
all belong to this earUer race, and all show the same peculiar char- 



ADDRESS BY HORATIO HALE. 33 

acteristics, — namely, a remarkable projection of the superciliary 
ridges, or the prominences just above the eyes, and an extremely 
low and receding forehead. What are termed the frontal promi- 
nences, that is, the projections of the upper part of the forehead, 
are entirely lacking. In both these respects the skulls of this 
race unquestionably approximate to those of the higher order of 
apes, the orang, the gorilla, and the chimpanzee. Speaking of the 
Neanderthal skull, in his Lectures on "Man's Place in Nature," 
Professor Huxley saj's : "Under whatever aspect we view this 
cranium, whether we regard its vertical depression, the enor- 
mous thickness of its superciliary ridges, its sloping occiput, 
or its long and straight squamosal suture, we meet with ape-like 
characters, stamping it as the most pithecoid of human crania yet 
discovered." But he adds that the cubic capacity of the skull is 
about seventy-five inches, which is the average capacity given by 
Morton for Polynesian and Hottentot skulls, while the average 
capacity of the gorilla skull is only about one third of that amount. 
Thus it is clear that the Neanderthal skull is that of a man, and not 
of an ape. But in these ancient crania the greater portion of the 
capacity is in the posterior part of the skull. The narrowness and 
depression of the forehead are remarkable, and exceed anything 
known in the skulls of existing races. The height of the forehead 
depends, of course, upon the development of the frontal lobe of the 
brain. The frontal lobe is made up, as regards its height, of three 
folds, or convolutions, termed by anatomists the first, second, and 
third frontal convolutions. These convolutions lie one above the 
other, the third being the lowest. This third convolution is some- 
what thicker than the other two, and adds therefore, in general, 
somewhat more to the height of the forehead than either of the 
others. Its absence, or almost entire absence, from the brain, 
would produce just such a depression, or extraordinar}' flatness, 
as we find in the foreheads of these ancient skulls. Now it is a 
remarkable fact, that, while the brain of a monkey is much smaller 
than that of a man, its general outline is ver}^ similar to that of the 
human brain. As Professor Huxle}' says, "the brain of a monkey 
exhibits a sort of skeleton map of man's." Most of the convolu- 
tions which are found in the one are present in the other. But 
there is one remarkable exception. In the lower apes the third 
frontal convolution is, according to Hartmann, "entirely absent." 
In the higher or anthropoid apes, it appears, but only in a rudi- 

3 



34 SECTION H. 

mentary form. "Its great development in men," writes Gewahrs- 
mann, " constitutes one of the most marked distinctions between 
the brains of apes and those of men." This statement has been 
questioned, as there is some difference of opinion in regard to the 
analysis of the convolutions ; but Bischoff, the highest authority, 
confirms it ; and Professor Hovelacque, in an article recently pub- 
lished in the Revue Scientifique on " The Evolution of Language," 
repeats the statement in these significant words : ' ' We mention 
here, without dwelling upon it, that the faculty of language stands 
in close relation with a certain one of the frontal convolutions of 
the brain, which the inferior monkeys do not possess, and which 
is found in a rudimentary state in the anthropoids, but of which the 
full acquisition and most complete development have made man 
what he is, the master of articulate speech." 

This third frontal convolution is sometimes called " Broca's 
convolution," from the fact that the distinguished French phj'siolo- 
gist. Dr. Paul Broca, was the first to localize the faculty of lan- 
guage.in it. This faculty, according to the description given by Dr. 
Topinard in his "Anthropology," has its seat in "the posterior 
portion of Broca's third frontal convolution." " Its surface has a 
vertical height of about four centimeters " (or a little over an inch 
and a half), " and an antero-posterior extension of from two to 
three and a half centimeters," that is, from a little less than an 
inch to nearly an inch and a half. Any lesion or disease of this 
part of the brain, as is well known to medical men, produces apha- 
sia, or the loss of the power of speech. If this convolution were 
absent from the human brain, or were only present in a rudimentar}^ 
form, as in the anthropoid apes, the man would be incapable of 
speech, and the height of his forehead would be greatlj^ diminished. 
We should have, in fact, the precise difference which exists be- 
tween the frontal portion of the Neanderthal or Podhaba skull, and 
that of the average skull of the present race of men. 

Some eminent writers, and one who may justly be stj'led pre- 
eminent, M. de Quatrefages, have sought to show that in modern 
times skulls similar to those of this ancient race have been met 
with, and in some cases have belonged to persons of no mean 
intellectual capacity. In his admirable work on " Fossil Men and 
Savage Men," he gives pictures of the skulls of St. Mansuy, 
Bishop of Toul, and of a Danish gentleman, named Kai-Likke, who 
took some part in politics in the seventeenth century. These are 



ADDRESS BY HORATIO HALE. 35 

compared with the Neanderthal skull. The measurements are not 
given, but their outline, and especially the front view of the Kai- 
Likke cranium, show a distinct superiorit}- in height to the Ne- 
anderthal skull ; and we must remember that an ecclesiastic or a 
politician may have but a scant development of the faculty of 
language, and may yet gain distinction by other intellectual 
qualities. 

The man of the River-drift, this Canstadt or Chellean man, was 
widely dispersed over a considerable part of the globe. His 
presence is known by the peculiar implements, or rather imple- 
ment, which he fashioned ; for in reality, as Prof, de Mortillet 
shows, he had but one, though this appears in varying shape. It 
is called, among writers on this subject, by different names. Some 
speak of it as an axe, others simply as the "drift implement," 
and M. de Mortillet describes it as "a stone fist." It is, in fact, 
simply a stone chipped rudely into an ovate or almond-hke shape, 
such as would enable a man to grasp it at one end, and strike with 
it a more effective blow than he could strike with his naked fist. 
It could be used in this manner for striking, scraping, or pounding, 
and, in a rough way, for cutting. There is a singular rudeness in 
its appearance, which marks at once the low intellectual grade of 
those who fashioned and used it. Dr. Daniel Wilson, in his work 
on "Prehistoric Man," has some striking remarks on this subject. 
He observes (in his third chapter) that the investigator, in examin- 
ing the earliest palaeolithic implements, might imagine that he had 
" traced his wa}^ back to the first crude efforts of human art, if not 
to the evolutionary dawn of a semi-rational artificer. It is a signifi- 
cant fact," he continues, " that no such clums}' unshapeliness char- 
acterizes the stone implements of the most degraded savage races." 
And he adds, that this essential difference of type " seems to point 
to some unexplained difference " between the artificers of the two 
periods. The explanation of this difference, which struck and 
perplexed this most discerning observer, seems now to be found in 
the fact that the earlier implements were the production of beings 
whose minds were in the undeveloped state that must necessaril}' 
characterize men who had not yet attained the power of speccli. 
No one will question the justice of Professor Whitney's remark on 
this point: "The speechless man is a being of undeveloped ca- 
pacities, having within him the seeds of everything great and good, 
but seeds whicli only language can fertilize and bring to fruit ; lie 



36 SECTION H. 

is potentially the lord of nature, the image of his Creator ; but in 
present reality he is only a more cunning brute among brutes." 
" A man born dumb," observes Professor Huxley, " notwithstanding 
his great cerebral mass and his inheritance of strong intellectual 
instincts, would be capable of few higher intellectual manifestations 
than an orang or a chimpanzee, if he were confined to the societ}'^ 
of dumb associates." We need not therefore be surprised to find 
that, wherever traces of the Eiver-drift men have been discovered, 
whether in France, England, Greece, Asia Minor, India, North 
Africa, or America, these traces, which consist merely of their 
peculiar implements, are everywhere the same, showing no variety 
in different regions, and no apparent improvement during the lapse 
of ages. The drift implements which the fortunate and skilful 
researches of Dr. Abbott have disclosed in New Jersey are in shape 
exactly like those which earlier investigators had unearthed from 
the river-banks of France and England. 

In view of these and other discoveries indicating the existence 
of Palaeolithic man in America, and also in view of other facts re- 
lating to the fauna of the two hemispheres, M. de Mortillet is 
decidedly of opinion that during a considerable portion of the early 
quaternar}^ era a connection existed between Europe and America 
by way of the Faroe Islands, Iceland, and Greenland. It is well 
known that such a connection existed during the miocene era. It 
was broken up in the pliocene age. But, as we know, a vast ele- 
vation of land in Europe took place during the Glacial Epoch of 
the quaternary or pleistocene age. The facts adduced by Pro- 
fessor Boyd Dawkins, in his " Early Man in Britain," show that,. 
if this elevation attained the height of five hundred fathoms, 
it must have restored the connection between the two continents. 
He also shows that the elevation did actually reach, at least in the 
region of the Mediterranean, a height of at least four hundred fath- 
oms. An additional rise of a hundred fathoms in the north, which 
may well be supposed, would have restored the "great tertiary 
bridge," and enabled the Eiver-drift man, with the various other 
animals of his epoch which are found on both continents, to pass 
from one to the other. 

But when the next race, which is styled by M. de Quatrefages 
the race of Cro-Magnon, appeared, the connection between the two 
continents had long ceased to exist. The Great Ice Age had passed 
away, and Europe was assuming its present condition. This race 



ADDRESS BY HORATIO HALE. 37 

of Cro-Magnon offered, in some respects, the strongest possible 
contrast to the preceding race of Canstadt, or River-drift men. In 
physical development it was, to use the expression of this distin- 
guished writer, " a magnificent race." The skull is large and well 
developed, with a forehead at once wide and loft}*. The capacity 
of one of these crania, according to Broca's measurement, was not 
less than 1,590 cubic centimeters, which exceeds b}' 119 centime- 
ters the average size of Parisian skulls of the present day. "Thus," 
adds M. de Quatrefages, "in this savage, a contemporarj' of the 
mammoth, we find all the craniological characters generalh' re- 
garded as the signs of a great intellectual development." To this 
ma}' be added, that in the earliest lower jaw of this race which has 
been discovered the genial tubercle is fully developed. The man of 
this epoch was a social being, endowed with the faculty- of speech. 
His frontal lobe was large and high, and ever}* convolution of the 
brain must have existed in unusual size. His intellectual pow- 
ers corresponded with this development. Of this fact we have 
the most remarkable and indeed astonishing proof in his works of 
art, — his pictures engraved on pieces of stone, ivor}', and bone, 
and his sculptures in bone and ivory. His representations of the 
animals of that period — the mammoth, the reindeer, the elk, the 
bear, the horse, the urus, the chamois, the whale, the pike, and 
many others — are most admirable for the artistic skill which they 
displa}', and for their evident truth to nature. On this point all 
observers are agreed. " We recognize in them," writes M. de 
Mortillet, " the works of a people eminently artistic. In these 
primitive engravings and sculptures we remark so true a sense of 
form and movement that it is almost alwa3's possible to determine 
exactly the animal represented, and to perceive the intention of the 
artist. Some of the works are really small masterpieces." " So 
natural are the attitudes, so exact the proportions," writes M. de 
Quatrefages, "that a decorative sculptor of our own days, in 
treating the same subject, could hardly do better than to copy his 
ancient predecessor." Dr. Wilson speaks in the highest terms of 
the " skill and intellectual vigor" manifested in these works of art, 
and adds the noteworthy remark: "In truth, it is far easier to 
produce evidences of deterioration than of progress, in instituting 
a comparison between the contemporaries of the mammoth and 
later prehistoric races of Europe or savage nations of modern cen- 
turies." In sliort, the evidence is clear and unquestionable, that, 



38 SECTION H. 

while the earliest race, the River-drift men, were in form and 
intellect the lowest race of human beings that have ever existed, 
their immediate successors, the Cave-men, or race of Cro-Magnon, 
must be ranked, in shape and aspect, in cranial development, and 
in intellectual endowments, among the very highest. 

It is proper to observe, that M. de Mortillet and Professor 
Dawkins make a distinction between the Cave-men and the " Neo- 
lithic men," or men of the Polished Stone era, who immediately 
followed them ; and they ascribe the remains of Cro-Magnon to the 
latter race. M. de Mortillet admits, however, that the people of 
Cro-Magnon were " evidently descendants of the Magdalenians," or 
Cave-men, who wrought these works of art ; and Professor Dawkins 
shows that the art-loving Cave-men and the less artistic Neolithic 
population were at one time contemporaries. It should be added, 
that the fact that this artistic race lived at the same time with the 
mammoth, which is now extinct, aflfbrds no evidence of its great 
antiquity. The mammoth was merely a variety of the elephant, 
diifering so little from the existing varieties that some naturalists 
have refused to consider it a distinct species. It probably became 
extinct at a quite recent period. Another extinct mammal, the 
great Irish elk, which was hunted both by the Cave-men and by 
the Neolithic men, survived down to the Bronze age ; and the urus, 
another animal of the quaternarj^ era, onl}^ became extinct a few 
centuries ago. The Cave-men of Professor Dawkins, the Cro-Mag- 
non race of Prof, de Quatrefages, were reallj^ a modern people, 
— a people of our own age. And the question naturally arises. 
When did this age, the age of speaking man, commence ? The 
answer will doubtless surprise many persons who have been accus- 
tomed to consider the question without regard to the primary and 
all-important distinction between the two races of men, — the 
speechless and the speaking race. The former can, no doubt, be 
traced back to an immense and undefined antiquity. The appear- 
ance of the latter dates back probably less than ten thousand 
years. 

We might feel tolerably sure of this fact, as a conclusion of 
simple reasoning. It is impossible to suppose that a people pos- 
sessing the intellectual endowments of the Cro-Magnon race would 
remain long in an uncivilized state, if they were once placed in a 
countrj' where the climate and other surroundings were favorable 
to the increase of population and to improvement in the arts of life. 



ADDRESS BY HOKATIO HALE. 39 

Even in the then rigorous climate and other hard conditions of 
Western Europe, they had advanced, as Dr. Paul Broca declares, 
"to the ver}' threshold of civilization." What must the^^ have 
become in Eg3'pt and in Southern Asia? In point of fact, during 
a comparatively brief space of time, ranging from five thousand to 
seven thousand years ago, the men of these regions developed in 
widely distant centres — in Egypt, in Mesopotamia, in Phoenicia, 
in Northern India, and in China — a high and varied civilization 
and culture, whose memorials, in their works of art and their litera- 
ture, astonish us at this day, and in some respects def}' imitation. 
To what circumstance can we attribute this sudden and wonderful 
flowering of human genius, after countless ages of torpidit}', but to 
the one all-sufficient cause, — the acquisition of the power of speech ? 
Man}' skilled observers have sought to discover b}' various indica- 
tions, such as the accumulation of debris in caves, the layers of 
earth formed bj' streams, tlie growth of bogs, and other evidences, 
the time which has elapsed from the era of the Cave-men and the 
Neolithic race to our own time. Professor Dawkins, in his account 
(given in his work on " Cave-Hunting") of the exploration of the 
Victoria Cave, at Settle in Yorkshire, makes an estimate, from the 
accumulation of talus in the cave, of the time which has elapsed 
since the cave was occupied by Neolithic man, and fixes it at about 
4,800 or 5,000 j-ears. Many other investigators have reached sim- 
ilar results. Their conclusions are well summed up b}' Prof. Alex- 
ander Winchell, in his work entitled " Preadamites." "Morlot," he 
tells us, "from the stud}' of the layers constituting the ' cone of 
the Tiniere,' — a deposit formed by a torrent discharging itself into 
the Lake of Geneva, — concluded that the Polished Stone epoch 
dates back 4,700 to 7,000 years. Gillieron, from researches at the 
Bridge of Miele, is led to fix the epoch of Polished Stone at 6,700 
years. Steenstrup, from investigations in the bogs of Denmark, is 
led to regard 4,000 years as the minimum for that epoch. De Ferry, 
from a study of the river-drifts of the Saone, puts the Polished 
Stone epoch at 4,383 years, and the epoch of the mammoth at 5,844 
to 7,305 years, — " fortunate," adds Professor Winchell, dryly, " if 
the thousands are as exact as the units in these figures." Arcelin, 
he further tells us, from a separate study of the drifts of the same 
river, arrives at a very close agreement with De Ferry, putting 
the epoch of Polished Stone from 3,000 to 4,000 years back, and 
the blue clay, containing the mammoth, from 6,700 to 8,000 years. 



40 SECTIOlf H. 

Finally, Le Hon, in view of all the results, fixes the age of Polished 
Stone at from 4,000 to 6,000 years, the age of the reindeer (which 
is in fact the age of Professor Dawkins's Cave-men) at a point 
be3'ond 7,000 j'ears, and carries back the age of the mammoth to 
an indefinite period. All these estimates are in substantial accord ; 
and none of them place the appearance of the Neolithic race, or 
men of the Polished Stone epoch, earlier than seven thousand j'ears, 
or that of the Cave-men, or men of the Keindeer period, more 
than eight thousand years back. The terms in each case are as 
likely to be less than these numbers as they are to be greater. 
It is impossible not to yield assent to such a mass of concurrent 
evidence. 

If a pair of human beings, male and female, endowed with speech 
and possessing the faculties of the earliest known people, the Cro- 
Magnon race, appeared in some region of the old continent where 
the climate and the natural productions were favorable to the exist- 
ence of men, what time would be required for their descendants to 
become numerous enough to found the early communities of 'Egypt 
and Mesopotamia, and to spread into Europe and Eastern Asia? 
The question is easity answered. Supposing the population to 
double onlj' once in fifty 3- ears, which is a ver}^ low estimate, it 
would amount in twelve hundred years to about forty millions, and 
in fourteen hundred 3'ears would be over six hundred millions, or 
nearly half the present population of the globe. That less than a 
thousand jxars will suflSce to create a high civilization, the exam- 
ples on our own continent presented by the Mexicans, the Ma3'as, 
the Mu3^scas, and the Peruvians ampl3^ prove. And that the same 
space of time would be sufficient for the development of the physi- 
cal peculiarities which characterize the various races of men, b3' 
climatic and other influences, is made clear b3' the evidence accumu- 
lated b3^ Prichard, De Quatrefages, Huxle3'', and other careful and 
trustworthy investigators. Nor need the change of climate which 
was undoubtedl3' in progress during the earlier part of the exist- 
ence of the Cro-Magnon race, and which is believed to have con- 
tributed to the extinction of the mammoth and other animals of 
that era, have occupied a longer period. In fact, the observations 
and estimates just quoted from Professor Winchell seem to show 
clearl3' that it did not. If the diversit3' of languages has had its 
origin in the cause suggested in this essa3', and ma3' therefore have 
arisen in any period, however brief, during which the peopling of 



ADDRESS BY HORATIO HAXE. 41 

the world has proceeded, there would seem to be no grounds what- 
ever for referring the first appearance of speaking man to a greater 
antiquity than eight, or at the most ten, thousand years. 

How, and where, did this momentous apparition occur? These 
are questions which naturall}^ arise, and our inquiry would not be 
complete without a brief consideration of them. That the " speak- 
ing man" of our era is a descendant of the "speechless man" of 
the River-drift period cannot be doubted. We have not to deal 
with the origin of a new species, but simpl}' with that of a variet}'. 
There can be no question that this variet}- arose in the usual wa}-, 
b}^ what is termed the process of heterogenesis, or, in other words, 
the law b}' which the offspring differs fi'om the parents. As ever}' 
child has two parents, it cannot resemble both, and, in point 
of fact, it never exactly resembles either of them. Ordinarily, this 
unlikeness is restricted within certain defined and rather narrow 
limits ; but occasionall}', as when dwarfs or giants are born to 
parents of ordinar}' stature, it is ver}' gi-eat. Among the lower 
animals, when such offspring propagate their like, a new variety 
or breed arises, which sometimes differs verj' widel}' from the origi- 
nal stock, — as occurred, for example, in the Ancon or otter breed 
of sheep, which thus originated in New England, and in the horn- 
less cattle which have overspread several provinces of Paragua}-. 
That in some famil}' of the primitive speechless race two or more 
children should have been born with the faculty and organs of 
speech is in itself a fact not speciall}- remarkable. Much greater dif- 
ferences between parents and offspring frequentlj' appear. Among 
these, for example, is one so common as to have received in physi- 
olog}' the scientific name of pol3'dactylism, — a tenn applied to the 
case of children born with more than the normal number of fingers. 
M. de Quatrefages mentions that in the family of Zerah Colburn, 
the celebrated calculator, four generations possessed this peculiarity, 
which commenced with Zerali's grandfather. In the fourth genera- 
tion four children out of eight still had the supernumerary fingers, 
although in each generation the many-fingered parent had married 
a person having normal hands. Plainly, he adds, if this Colburn 
family had been dealt nth like the Ancon breed of sheep, a six- 
fingered variet}' of the human race would have been formed ; and 
this, it may be added, would have been a far greater variation than 
was the production of a speaking race descending from a speech- 
less pair. The appearance of a sixth finger requires new bones, 



42 SECTION H. 

muscles, and tendons, with additional nerves leading ultimately to 
the brain. There is good reason to believe that the first endow- 
ment of speech demanded far less change than this. All the an- 
thropoid apes can utter cries of some sort, and some of them can 
make a variet}^ of sounds. Professor Hartmann expresslj' informs 
us that the lar3^nx in these animals resembles in the main that 
of man. We cannot doubt that our primitive ancestor, the Homo 
alalus^ in spite of his name, could utter many sounds, and pos- 
sessed the usual vocal organs. Professor Huxley has dwelt with 
much force on the slight anatomical difference which might exist 
between the speechless and the speaking man. A change of the 
minutest kind, he tells us, in the structure of one of the nerves 
which communicate with the vocal chords, or in the structure of 
the part in which it originates, or in the supply of blood to that 
part, or in one of the muscles to which it is distributed, might 
render all of us dumb. And he adds (in words similar to those 
already quoted) : "A race of dumb men, deprived of all communi- 
cation with those who could speak, would be little indeed removed 
from the brutes. The moral and intellectual difference between 
them and ourselves would be practically infinite, though the natu- 
ralist should not be able to find a single shadow even of specific 
structural difference." 

In the actual case, so far as can be judged from the osteology, 
the changes which took place when the speaking children were born 
to the speechless pair were in the greater development of the cere- 
bral convolution in which the faculty of language resides, in the new 
direction given to the under part of the lower jaw, which now pro- 
jected forward instead of receding, and in the increased volume and 
strength of the genio-glossal muscles, which \)y their action devel- 
oped the genial tubercle, and gave at once greater size and more 
freedom of movement to the tongue. These changes, though so 
important in their results, were really slight compared with the 
changes in a case of polydactylism. The chief alteration was, of 
course, that which took place in the brain. It was simpl}- the en- 
largement of a fold of that organ ; but its effect was prodigious, and 
has transformed the globe. This enlarged fold was the seat, not 
merely of the faculty of language, but of man}" other faculties, all of 
which showed at once the effect of their newl}' acquired power. 

And here it is proper to remark on the mistake, or the confusion 
of processes, which has led some esteemed writers to suppose that 



ADDEESS BY HORATIO HALE. 43 

the first speaking men, originating from parents of weak mental 
capacity, must have partaken of that intellectual feebleness. Elabo- 
rate works have been written on this subject, in which the whole 
argument has been based on the supposition that the earliest of 
speaking men were inferior to their successors, not merely' in 
accumulated knowledge, — which was a matter of course, — but 
in mental power, which is a ver}- different affair. The lowest 
tribes of our time — the Australians, Hottentots, Fuegians, and 
other savages — have been assumed to be fair representatives of 
what our earliest ancestors must have been when they were first 
endowed with the faculty of speech. This supposition is contrary 
both to reason and to the known facts. It confuses two processes, 
which are totally unlike in their working and in their results. The 
changes caused by climate and the other external influences which 
are commonl}' known as the " environment " are gradual. The 
changes which arise from heterogenesis are sudden, and are at once 
complete. In the cases of polydactyHsm, we do not find that a 
mere germ or stump of a finger first appears, and gradually becomes 
longer and stronger in succeeding generations. The perfect finger 
appears at once. So in the lower animals : the Ancon or otter 
breed is known to have sprung from a single sheep, born with ab- 
normally short legs, which became no shorter in its descendants. 
The hornless cattle of Paraguay are known to be all descended from 
a single animal, which was born without horns. There is no rea- 
son for supposing that the earhest speaking men ma}' not have 
been endowed with the highest intellectual faculties of the human 
race. There is ever}^ reason to believe that they were so endowed. 
The race of Cro-Magnon, the earliest known race of social men, 
though barbarians, were, in point of cerebral development and of 
artistic powers, not onl}- superior to an}- barbarians of the present 
day, but certainly equal, if not superior^ to any civilized race that 
has ever existed. The other earliest communities known to us, 
those of Egypt and of Southwestern Asia, have surpassed in their 
architecture and their inventions all succeeding races. Their tem- 
ples and other structures are the despair of our architects. All the 
first elements of knowledge and of progress have come from them. 
They invented pottery and glass, the plough and the loom. Tlie^' 
invented the alphabet, and with it a varied and voluminous litera- 
ture. They invented astronomy, geometr}', and history. They 
smelted copper and iron. They tamed almost all the most useful 



44 SECTION H. 

animals. They first cultivated almost aU the most valuable escu- 
lents. They and their earliest offshoots devised all the forms of 
settled government, — monarchy in Assj'ria and Egypt, theocracy 
in India, aristocracy in Phoenicia, and democracy in Arabia. The}^ 
invented the great Egyptian, Assyrian, and Aryan religions, and 
endowed their gods with the qualities of knowledge, power, and jus- 
tice, which they most admired in their rulers. In Egj'pt thej' in- 
stituted the judgment after death, and in AssjTia they established 
the Sabbath. Their period was that which has been well stjied by 
Mr. Gladstone the " 3^outh of the world," — juventus mundi^ — 
when the human race, on its thinly peopled planet, felt all its ener- 
gies called forth to meet the wants and solve the problems of its 
new existence. 

This conclusion as to the high intellectual grade of the earliest 
speaking man is very important in its bearing on our views respect- 
ing the so-called inferior races. It is clear that thej'' represent, not 
this primitive man, but simply a degeneration caused by unfavorable 
influences. If this degeneration has taken place, as there seems 
every reason for believing, within a very brief period, — five or six 
thousand years at furthest, and most of it probably within a few 
centuries after their separation from the original stock, — there 
seems good reason for believing that an improvement in their sur- 
roundings will be followed by a gradual elevation, and a return to 
the high primitive tj^pe. 

The question of the region in which speaking man first appeared 
is one on which there is room for a wide difference of opinion. It 
is a question about which no one will venture to dogmatize. The 
natural supposition, of course, would be that this first appearance 
took place somewhere near the centres of the earliest civilization. 
These centres were in Egypt and Assyria. Between those coun- 
tries lies Arabia, in which, amidst the sandy desert that protects 
the land from invasion, there are many oases, large and small, 
blessed with a most genial climate and a fruitful soil. In these 
oases, which have never known the sway of a foreign conqueror, 
the native traditions go back to a dim antiquity, in which no evi- 
dence of early barbarism is discerned. From that primitive centre, 
if such it was, the increasing population would speedily overflow 
into the plains of Mesopotamia and the fertile valley of the Nile ; 
and there, or in their near vicinity, nearly all the animals which 
were first tamed, and nearly all the plants which were first culti- 



ADDRESS BY HORATIO HALE. 45 

vated, would be found. We need not be surprised, therefore, to 
find that the great majority of investigators have looked to South- 
western Asia for the primitive seat of the human race. The most 
distinct tradition that has come down to us of the earliest belief re- 
specting the creation of man — the tradition which is preserved in 
the Hebrew narrative — places it in an oasis on the Arabian bor- 
der, and dates it apparently at about the time when, as all the evi- 
dence seems to show, man endowed with speech first appeared. 

One other question, not certainly of the first importance, but 
still of curious and genuine interest, remains to be considered. If 
the first language spoken b}' man was invented less than ten thou- 
sand years ago, it may be deemed next to a certainty that this lan- 
guage has survived to our time, — not, of course, in its exact original 
form, but in some derived idiom. It ma}' be taken for granted that 
the population speaking this language would be wideh' diffused, and 
would have many descendants, now speaking affiliated languages of 
the original stock. There are three families of languages clustered 
about the supposed centre of this priscan population, the Hamito- 
Semitic, the Aryan, and the Ural-Altaic. The Hamito-Semitic 
stock has for its earliest representatives the Arabic, the Assyrian, 
the Hebrew, and the Egyptian. The Aryan family numbers among 
its most ancient members the Sanscrit, the Zend, and the Greek. 
The Ural-Altaic stock, to which the Turkish, the Finnish, and the 
Hungarian languages belong, finds its chief, but sufficient, claim to 
high antiquity in the Accadian, whose discovery and decipherment, 
from the hieroglyphics of the Assyrian inscriptions, have furnished 
one of the most notable triumphs of modern scholarship. Each of 
these three great families of speech is very widel}' diffused, and each 
of them might advance strong claims to this curious genealogical 
distinction of being the direct representative of the earliest tongue. 
The question is one whose determination by strictly scientific 
methods does not seem by any means beyond reasonable hope. If 
science can weigh the planets, can define the chemical components 
of the fixed stars, and describe the shape of continents that ex- 
isted millions of years ago, it may surely be expected to find evi- 
dence for determining the particular linguistic stock to which the 
earliest spoken language belonged. Such evidence as we have at 
present certainly seems to favor the Hamito-Semitic family. This 
famil}' possesses the most ancient literature, and, if the dificrence 
between the Hamitic and Semitic groups is considered, seems to 



46 SECTION H. 

have varied, in the long lapse of ages, most widely. Lepsius and 
F. Miiller have traced its influence far into the interior of Africa ; 
and Professor Gerland, going further still, unites the whole popu- 
lation of that vast peninsula with the Semitic group in one great 
Arabic- African race. There is a certain evidence — not perhaps 
decisive, but worthy of consideration — which seems to connect 
the Cro-Magnon race with the Hamitic branch of this family. The 
extinct population of the Canary Islands, the Guanches, are known 
to have belonged to this Hamitic branch, and their crania, as Prof, 
de Quatrefages shows, bear a striking resemblance to those of the 
men of the Cro-Magnon era. This cautious investigator does not 
hesitate to pronounce the Guanches to be evidently the descendants 
of that ancient race. He declares that " the resemblance of cranial 
forms sometimes amounts to identity," and he adds the confirma- 
tory fact, that a late observer, M. Verneau, has found among the 
present islanders — who are in part descended from the Guanches 
— implements precisely like those which were used in France by 
the Cro-Magnon hunters. 

The conclusions to which this inquir}^, guided b}^ the most recent 
discoveries of science, has directed us, ma}- be briefly summed up. 
We find that the ideas of the antiquity of man which have pre- 
vailed of late years, and more especially since Lyell published his 
notable work on the subject, must be considerably modified. No 
doubt, if we are willing to give the name of man to a half-brutish 
being, incapable of speech, whose only human accomplishments were 
those of using fire and of making a single clums}^ stone implement, 
we must allow to this being an existence of vast and as yet un- 
defined duration, shared with the mammoth, the wooll3- rhinoceros, 
and other extinct animals. But if, with many writers, we term the 
beings of this race the precursors of man, and restrict the name of 
men to the members of the speaking race that followed them, then 
the first appearance of man, properly so styled, must be dated at 
about the time to which it was ascribed before the discoveries of 
Boucher de Perthes had startled the civilized world, — that is, some- 
where between six thousand and ten thousand j^ears ago. And this 
man who thus appeared was not a being of feeble powers, a dull- 
witted savage, on the mental level of the degenerate Australian or 
Hottentot of our day. He possessed and manifested, from the 
first, intellectual faculties of the highest order, such as none of his 
descendants have surpassed. His speech, we may be sure, was 



ADDRESS BY HORATIO HALE. 



47 



not a mere mumble of disjointed sounds, framed of interjections 
and of imitations of the cries of beasts and birds. It was, like 
every language now spoken an}- where on earth bj^ any tribe, how- 
ever rude or savage, a full, expressive, well-organized speech, 
complete in all its parts. The first men spoke, because thej^ pos- 
sessed, along with the vocal organs, the cerebral faculty of speech. 
As Professor Max Miiller has well said, "that faculty was an 
instinct of the mind, as irresistible as any other instinct." It was 
as impossible for the first child endowed with this faculty not to 
speak, in the presence of a companion similarly endowed, as it 
would be for a nightingale or a thrush not to carol to its mate. 
The same facultj' creates the same necessity in our days ; and its 
exercise by young children, when accidentallj^ isolated from the 
teachings and influence of grown companions, will readil}" account 
for the existence of all the diversities of speech on our globe. 

If the views now presented shall be confirmed b}' further in- 
vestigations, the}' will serve to clear up uncertainties which have 
perplexed the minds of students of linguistic science and of archae- 
ology, and have seriously impeded the progress of all the anthro- 
pological sciences. The views, with the evidence which seems to 
sustain them, are therefore respectfully submitted to the candid 
consideration of the members of our Section, and through them to 
the students of those sciences in other countries, in the hope of 
inducing further inquiry which may lead to decisive and satisfac- 
tory conclusions on these important questions. 



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